WARNING: SPOILERS.
I watched Matthew Bourne’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet at the cinema last night. It was great. Some great dancing to Prokofiev’s score.
And yet, you do have to ask the question, when does something stop being an “interpretation” or “adaptation” and just become a new thing?
That’s certainly a valid question for this piece. It is not the classic reviewers’ phrase “a stark reimagining” of the story. It doesn’t have anything to do with the Shakespeare tale, and here is why:
This show is set in a kind of asylum for ill-behaved children.
There was no clear sense of “two houses divided”, of rival Montagus and Capulets.
Tybalt was a prison guard who continually rapes Juliet before Romeo turns up.
The rape of Juliet is irrelevant to the unwinding of the story.
Juliet and Romeo strangle Tybalt to death.
The tragedy that comes from the trick of fake suicide and is followed by a double suicide is at the very heart of the story. It was replaced by manslaughter and a remorseful suicide.
So, weighed up, the whole thing was NOTHING AT ALL to do with Romeo and Juliet.
It was more like the show should have been called:
“Matthew Bourne’s troupe dance to the music of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet but have nothing to do with the story.”
But I guess that is less catchy.